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#14 WOMAN IS THE FUTURE OF MAN
09/09/2005
In some respects, Falling...in Love is an Asian version of Antonioni's Identification of a Woman. It shows three women who have in common one boyfriend and the fact that they never seem to love the right man, a dissonance the caesura within the title underlines, as do the almost inexistant and self-obliterating dialogues ('Don't go!', 'I am not going!', 'You aren't, you won't?'','Of course not!', etc.) and the way the director recurrently organises his close-ups —when two people are facing each other—, filming the character in the foreground from the back and blurring the face of the other character. Here, sentimental relationships are envisaged in a typically Asian sado-masochistic way, as if the very possibility of mutual love was an illusion —a perspective confirmed by the both violent and peaceful ending.
In some way, the script really would not make sense on its own if it were not for the images. The vaguely pop-artish red and green tones, the multiplication of 'meaningless' (as says the prostitute) objets (fridges, beer cans, Snoopys...) provides a visual justification for the cheesy exaggeratedly melodramatic plot.
This work is not unpromising; we can only hope Wang Ming-Tai's next film will also be suitable for colour-blind spectators...
Interview with Emidio Greco
Why did you accept to present this film?
I felt like presenting an Asian movie, for ultimately I have been thinking about a theme recurrent in Oriental cinema; the emphasis is put on the individual, which results in a negation of the context. Here, the city does not appear - not does it in Wong Kar-Wai, Kim Ki-duk, Old Boy...What matters are feelings and private stories. In terms of style, this idea is coherently expressed on the image by a blurring (with a long lense) of reality, which is more 'signified' (by a series of signs) than actually described.
Is this a new trend?
Falling...in Love clearly relates to Antonioni's films, but this can be said about the last two or three generations of Asian filmmakers.
In terms of 'trend', the ending illustrates a more recent motif: the characters unexpectedly choose to go back to their origins. This is particularly interesting, for China, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan are precisely the countries which contributed most to developing the modern technologies responsible for blurring and eventually cancelating reality. In think this poetics —that is, the fact that all Asian films (despite the differences between the above-mentioned countries in terms of film culture) seem to have in common a negation of modernity— is what defines best cinematic creation in Asia at the moment —cf. In the Mood for Love.
Bénédicte Prot
www.cineuropa.org
In the photogallery, pictures by Michele Lamanna
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Falling... in love |
Falling... in love |
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